sushipanda

The lady at the JBL kiosk in the Zhongshan Park Yongle electronics store saw me looking at the following JBL marketing poster:

She started pointing at some of the celebrities on the poster. “See? That’s Michael Jackson!”

I kept staring at it.

“And Bill Clinton!”

I was focusing on the two athletes on the bottom row, semi-retired boxer Osca De La Hoya and steroid user and washed-up MLB player Miguel Tejada. I was trying to figure out how they could be connected to JBL speakers. Maybe they had their own hi-fi systems at home and wanted to lend their mugs for this 60th Anniversary marketing poster. Or maybe they were just randomly selected from an issue of 2004 GQ by some dude in Guangzhou trying to put together a decent looking fake poster.

Ok, I have to admit, this one really got me. From ChinaHush:

May 19, 2010 at noon, an amazing scene on the pedestrian bridge walkway in front of the south entrance to Foxconn Corporation, Shenzhen captured people’s eyes. From Shandong province, an optimistic man with no arms used his feet and wrote down some inspirational words in Chinese calligraphy for the Foxconn employees, to advice them not to do any more foolish things – jumping off buildings and committing suicide.

Foxconn is in the news a lot these days (at least here in China) due to the large number of worker suicide attempts (11 so far this year, 9 of them successful). Most of the factory workers at Foxconn (and at many large electronic factories) are rural youngsters far away from home. Foxconn is a huge original-desing manufacturer run by ruthlessly efficient and oftentimes heavy-handed Taiwanese executives. The mix can be volatile, needless to say.

One commercial that has been playing over and over again in that detestable FocusMedia screen inside the elevator of my apartment building is for China Citic Bank’s new line of “fragrant” bank cards. Yes, folks, after doing some quick Baidu research, I have confirmed that these cards really do give off some sort of scent. And from the ad, it seems like Citic is basing an entire campaign off of that one attribute. And boy, do they smother on the cheese for such a ridiculous product:

Shot 2: Shot of a young girl getting nose-kissed by her mother. V.O.: “小时候, 离不开她 – When young, I could never leave her behind,”
Shot 4: A young woman, embracing some dude in front of a carousel. V.O.: “长大了, 离不开他 – When an adult, and I can’t leave him behind”
Shot 6: I guess the same woman, now a bit holder, holding her debit card up to her nose and taking a deep sniff. V.O.: “现在, 离不开它 – Now, I can’t leave it behind.”

Yes, she’s talking about her bank card. Her ridiculously stupid, smelly bank card. The marketing team at Citic and whichever creative director at Citic’s ad agency should all be dragged outside and caned.

Why do some lucky fools get to see hot girls making out with each other on the subway, and I get to see some old dude clipping his fingernails?